SunPine Press offers collector's copy of The Environmental Destruction
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SunPine Press Spotlights

Humanity's Environmental Future: Making
Sense in a Troubled World

William Ross McCluney, Ph. D.

420 pages ISBN 09744461-0-6 $44.95

An original work, a comprehensive evaluation of the environmental and socio-economic
problems humanity faces in its struggles toward a sustainable future. Powerful
forces are destroying Earth's life-support system—the biosphere. News
reports provide alarming details of environmental decline and ecosystem
breakdown. Earth is losing it ability to support human life.

The problem is rooted in the industrial world's economic and business theories,
lifestyles, development policies, education, and politics. Developing nations
are pursuing similar growth and economic policies. Misplaced values and
beliefs drive humankind toward environmental disaster and hinder comprehensive
measures to stop the relentless destruction of our planet.

This new book
by a nationally recognized scientist and educator presents the causes and assessments
of our difficulties, offering insights on methods for reversing the present
devastation before conditions become irreversible. It includes specific
reform proposals and positive suggestions for personal, group, government,
and political action. More....

Getting to the Source: Readings on Sustainable
Values

William Ross McCluney, Ph. D., editor

317 pages ISBN 09744461-1-4 $39.95

A collection of essays by prominent environmental writers.
Contributions selected for their relevance to the philosophical and ethical
aspects of the subject, their eloqence in expressing Earth values, and their
special insights into what we must do to create a sustainable future for humanity.

The authors offer a variety of perspectives, critical in framing public policy
and inbiting debate on future directions. Included are essays on growth, extinction,
world oil production, the environmental movement, and the new manner of thinking
Einstein said would be needed for humanity to move to higher levels and survive
into the future. More....

News
Release

"The
Fate of the Earth--That's really up for grabs"

Book
Review Suggestions

About
the Author/Editor

Dr. Ross McCluney, Principal Research Scientist at the Florida Solar
Energy Center from 1976 to 2007, has enjoyed a career spanning several
disciplines. For his B. A. degree (Rhodes College in Memphis) he studied
physics, mathematics, economics, philosophy, English literature, and religion.
His M.S. thesis research (University of Tennessee in Knoxville) dealt
with the diffraction of laser light by high frequency sound waves in water.

While working as an optical engineer at Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester,
McCluney studied the new field of holography at the University of Rochester’s
Institute of Optics, then pioneered at Kodak the use of holographic interferometry
for diagnostic tests of optical systems. This work continued while he
pursued his Ph.D. degree on a National Science Foundation fellowship at
the University of Miami, developing a complex holographic interferometer
for detecting minute changes in gas density inside a test cell made of
optically imperfect clear acrylic plastic.

During his studies in Miami, McCluney became concerned about humanity’s
destruction of Earth’s ecosystems and contacted the Miami regional
office of National Audubon Society for more information. This led to the
founding of the UM’s first student environmental organization, Environment!,
and his work as an organizer of the University’s observance of the
first Earth Day Teach-In, on 22 April 1970. While at UM, he taught a semester-long
adult education class on South Florida’s environmental problems.
An outcome of these experiences was the suspension of his physics studies
for a year to work on a graduate assistantship at the University’s
new Center for Urban and Environmental Studies, then headed by Carl McHenry.
Working at CUES for the renowned ecologist, Art Marshall (http://www.artmarshall.org),
McCluney edited a series of essays about the environmental problems of
South Florida. The University’s Graduate Research Council agreed
to underwrite the project, and the manuscript was published by the University
of Miami Press in 1971 as The Environmental Destruction of South Florida.
This book reached a seventh printing in 1990, before going out of print
in 1992. Copies are available from used book sellers.

Upon returning to his physics work, McCluney switched research topics
to optical oceanography, studying the light scattering properties of marine
phytoplankton. Following receipt of his Ph.D. degree in physics, he worked
for three years as an optical oceanographer at NASA’s Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, occasionally working with Jacques Cousteau
on joint NASA/Cousteau projects.

In 1976 Dr. McCluney was appointed to the Florida Solar Energy Center
in Cocoa, a research institute of the University of Central Florida in
Orlando. His textbook, Introduction to Radiometry and Photometry
was published by Artech House in 1992.

Over the years since 1976, Dr. McCluney has studied, written, and lectured
widely on environmental topics, concentrating on the ethical and philosophical
aspects of the subject. In the Fall of 2003 and the Spring of 2004 he
taught the first semester-long university course based on the two books
he completed in late 2003: Humanity’s Environmental Future
and Getting to the Source.